Kent State University

We brought higher-ed up to where their students are.

Problem

Kent State was spending too much time on Ops work and needed faster time to market and more efficiency in their research.

Goal

They wanted to migrate their applications to the cloud to take advantage of quicker time to market and improved efficiencies and enable them to spend less time on Ops work.

Solution

We provided a Cloud Assessment of 140+ applications to help them develop a migration strategy.

About the Company

Kent State University is ranked among the nation’s 77 public research universities demonstrating high-research activity by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Kent State has become an engine for economic, cultural and workforce development locally and internationally as one of the premiere Ohio universities. Kent State University has an eight-campus system throughout Northeast Ohio. The main Kent Campus provides the resources and facilities of a large, diverse Ohio university, while the seven Regional Campuses offer the friendly, casual atmosphere of small liberal arts colleges.

The Business Challenges

Kent State University was looking to migrate a number of their applications to the cloud in order to take advantage of some of key features which allow for quicker time to market, improved efficiencies, and enable them to spend less time on Ops work.

The 2nd Watch Solution

2nd Watch provided an overall Assessment of 140+ of KSU’s applications through an in-depth process of developing a list of assessment questions and inputting those questions into a 3rd party hosted survey delivery program. Over a four-month time period 2nd Watch developed, conducted and evaluated the survey. 2nd Watch provided recommendations based on the survey results, the company’s experience and best practice.

The Business Benefits

2nd Watch’s assessment enabled the university to have a cohesive strategy around which applications and technologies, in their current environment, will translate well into the cloud. The assessment provided Kent State with a plan for moving forward, a better vision of their capabilities in the cloud, and the efficiencies they can gain from the migration.

Kent State’s internal team will begin the process of building their cloud infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in September, with planned usage of AWS EC2, ELB plus Snapshots, VPC and Auto Scaling. 2nd Watch recommended AWS based on the university’s need for flexible capacity, on-demand pricing and fast resource provisioning. Kent State will take advantage of Utility Model, which allows them to build a server to host multiple applications, and Utility Framework, to support future infrastructure needs more efficiently, as well as application and systems rationalization for existing platforms. 2nd Watch will assist Kent State with consulting solutions and best practices as they build their environment as well as provide engineering resources for the build as needed.